I can only think of one story I want to tell.

There’s this local color here in the mountains. Fly fisherman extraordinaire; he’s been featured on the Heartland Series several times. Everyone knows him for his singin’, and his late daddy for his preachin’. He’s an excavator by trade, but a big cut up at heart. To know him truly is to love him.

So one day, I’m standing at my post behind the counter at the Co-op and he ambles up with his long legged stride. I don’t know how he finds overalls to fit. Toothpick in his mouth, he says to me, “How ya doin’ girl?” Same as always.

I grin. “Just fine, Mr. Ball. And how are you today?”

“Oh, I’m a-gittin’ by. I been at the hospital a-visitin’.”

“Oh no, I hope whoever it is gets well! The hospital is no place to be.”

“You’re tellin’ me!” As always, a smile was playing on his lips and his eyes twinkled. I had no doubt he had brightened the day of whoever it was he went to see, just as he always brightens mine. “I got in the elevator, and it was busy, you know. Lotta people sick this time of year. Anyway, there was seven or eight of us in there, and this lady standin’ next to me, she leaned over and said to me real quiet, ‘Smells like somebody forgot to put their deodorant on this morning!’ And I said, ‘ma’am, it wasn’t me! I don’t wear any!'”

With that, he burst into a full fledged grin as I just died laughing. You never know what you’re gonna get with him. Who knows how much of it, if any, was true. That’s the best part, he probably had been up at the hospital. And he’ll have you in there, hook, line, and sinker before you know it. Someday I’ll tell you about the time he got pulled over. He calls them his “little funnies” but to me, they’re great big funnies.

“Let your smile be an umbrella,” he always says as a way of goodbye. I do love Ray Ball.